What I am reading, and what I am trying to persuade my 10 year old son to read.

Friday, 13 May 2011

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey

This is my first ever Persephone - and it didn't disappoint. The story takes place over a few hours on the wedding day of Dolly Thatcham. It is clear that Dolly is having doubts. An air of forced jollity and pretence hangs over the whole proceedings. The guests are downstairs, the bride is getting ready upstairs. Nobody is happy - but nobody is saying that they are unhappy.

Kitty, self-conscious in her bridesmaid's get up is telling anyone who will listen that she looks dreadful and brushing away any attempts to convince her otherwise. Joseph, in love with Dolly, is torturing himself by being at her wedding. The groom, Owen, blunders in, awkward and unwanted. There is an sense of menace about the way that the bride's cousin Tom is bullying his brother Robert about wearing bright green socks with his suit.

There is no plot as such, it is a study of these people, at this time. I thought that Strachey's prose was spare and straightforward, capturing the repression of everyone's feelings perfectly.

I've not read any of Strachey's work, although I've read a good deal about her when I've been reading about the lives of other writers and artists associate with Bloomsbury. In fact, looking at my shelves I have a biography about Julia herself written by Frances Partridge. I shall have to see if there is a copy of this available anywhere locally and check what she writes with the way she is described. Not the most stable of ladies, I believe.